Graham Henry: Could Carwyn Jones 'do a Cameron' and refresh his Cabinet with women?

Some of those who left the cabinet - and some of those newly appointed

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A reshuffle as brutal as the one experienced by the Conservative Cabinet this week is rare – but David Cameron appeared compelled to wield the axe to fundamentally change the look and feel of his team.

But while the spotlight was on Westminster this week, the eyes of Wales’ chattering classes may well fall on the Welsh Cabinet’s own image problems.

First Minister Carwyn Jones has said there will be a reshuffle in Wales before the next Assembly elections in 2016.

His one major reshuffle since the last election – conducted via Twitter in March last year – could be summed up as a tinkering exercise. One new ministerial face, in health chief Mark Drakeford. The rest all moved around.

An enforced reshuffle a couple of months later after Leighton Andrews’ resignation produced two new deputy ministers and another shuffling of the same pack.

Firstly, Edwina Hart emerged from the rubble having accumulated yet more briefs from the dividing-up of Mr Davies’ portfolio, emerging with the largest department of the government – with economy, science, transport, agriculture, fisheries and food now making up the ludicrously-long acronym of ESTAFF. She can now be considered an extremely powerful figure in the Cabinet.

But rather like his unlikely bedfellow David Cameron, Carwyn Jones has his own headache in ensuring a continued female presence in his Cabinet.

Many of the big beasts in his team have been there from the very beginning of devolution.

There has been speculation in Cardiff Bay over whether Ms Hart – an Assembly Member elected at the very beginning in 1999 – will stand again in 2016. One of the other “big beasts”, in Finance Minister Jane Hutt, has been there since the start too.

Both have served in a huge array of government portfolios, so it begs the question over where they go next – and whether they would want to go on inexorably.

The only new addition in the (largely uneventful) mini-reshuffle was another woman – Deputy Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, Rebecca Evans. But while she is considered able, she remains unproven and an unknown quantity in Ministerial terms.

Local Government Minister Lesley Griffiths is a strong ally of Mr Jones, but blotted her copybook during her turbulent reign as Health Minister and may have to wait it out for a return to one of the big portfolios.

Many of the Welsh Labour backbenches are able women – but have been overlooked in previous reshuffles while men have been promoted ahead of them – so expectations of a promotion, if there was a Cameron-style Welsh female advance, may be low.

So the prospects of a rapid filling up of the Cabinet ranks of new female faces are not strong. This is partly because there are big-hitting women already there, and partly because the female alternatives have failed to capture Mr Jones’ imagination.

The latter could be down to the make-up of the Senedd. With Labour only narrowly short of an overall majority, the backbenchers are whipped to within an inch of their lives to minimise the risk of government defeats... not much elbow room for them to make a splash or an impact on the wider picture.

But the big picture is one of female representation in the Senedd, as a whole, gradually declining from the heady days of the 50-50 gender split in the mid-noughties.

Arresting the slide in women’s representation comes into sharp focus over the last week or so, with Assembly stalwarts Dame Rosemary Butler and Plaid Cymru veteran Jocelyn Davies both announcing they will stand down in 2016, following in the footsteps of another 1999 original, Christine Chapman earlier this year.

The methods to make sure women get into Parliament are politically controversial – as the proposal for an all-women shortlist in the Cynon Valley constituency to succeed Ann Clwyd as the MP candidate showed.

All-women shortlists are polarising instruments, but they do ensure a new complement of talented female politicians can get into the Senedd in the first place – and that’s the first step that the Assembly and the government must overcome. If women are to prove themselves and earn ministerial places, they have to be there in the first place.

The Welsh Cabinet has an established presence of experienced female politicians in major roles – and that was a hand David Cameron largely did not have before his cull of middle-aged men this week. But if we are to ensure a strong and talented female Cabinet presence in the future, the work needs to start now.